Starting to work on schedule for 2016. Looking at plugging in a scenario game next year. I've got a few questions and I'd like to get some civil feedback and advice.
We've had a few issues in past efforts which were problematic. The event had draw power, but it pulled players that really didn't work and play well with others if you know what I mean. These were guys that had no field loyalty to us they just came for the game and things went down hill a bit. We ended up throwing a couple off the field and it tainted the fun for a lot of us.
In the old days we held events like this as a way of saying thanks to our players for giving us a good season. I'm think we may have to return to that.
We've got an e-mail list of 1500 players that use our field. What's the upsides and downsides of doing an invitational scenario? Or doing an Invitational with a plus one so each invited person could bring a friend.
We will have to limit it to 200 players (100 rentals) and (100 Private gun players). We've agreed that 200 will push the staff to the upper limits and to go above we risk putting on a poor show for our customers
SO what would you suggest?

I know from my experiences of large scale scenario games, You cant filter out all the negativity. Some people are just jerks (some all the time others only under pressure) and it can't be helped.

My major event down here is Wayne's World of Paintball, and I try to make the grand finale every year. Every year someone (sometimes myself) encounters some unacceptable people, but we all know how to get a hold of the ref staff to deal with an altercation.

The best thing that I can think of is at the beginning of the event, before anyone hits the field, have your welcome/safety/intro speech. Make your expectations known, let them know that inappropriate behavior is not tolerated and you will be removed from the event. But above all, let them know this is a place where we can all have fun and show some true sportsmanship.

It would be good to have a theme that most everyone can get into. You could have people on the field with costumes, props, or just say funny one liners ("your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"). A story line would be a good idea to look into as well.

If you can only handle 200 people let it be known, as this may actually deter the annoying people. If you have the ability to do pre-registration, I would promote that (get them to pay at that time while you are at it).

My only question on this is will you be able to meet that 100 rental quota? You could promote large groups getting a discount on rentals for the event.

Some things I have noticed in my scenario games, having generals and commanding officers helps organize teams, creates elimination challenges for opposing players and can help the staff out a bit. Having this "go to" person that is in charge of your team can keep most of the players busy while still allowing those who just want to play some straight up paintball do their thing.

I wish I had the go to people but my old guard all got old and retired. We see very few private guns I'd say 70% of our business is rental players. when we have a scenario the private guns out number the rentals 10 to 1 though. These guys are where the problems begin to arise.
It really disappoints that they won't use the field unless we have a special event. Because of this they have no idea where things are or why we want them to be gentle. But we'll see. I think we'll slide this into the month of June. I don't dare try late in the year in case we got rained out. We have to shut down in the winter and getting caught sitting on 100 cases of paint would be very bad.

Do you have regulars that come to your field often? You could convince them to be a general. Maybe friends/family/local players that you know well and think would be good for the position?

A general/captain/commanding officer is almost essential to keep an organized team flowing. I know for our events, without one for each side we would just be scattered and be indecisive over missions and where to go.

Yeah that's the way we use to do it. But all the regulars are gone. My players show up once or twice a year which makes it tough to build anything. In the old days when we were hosting 3000 players a year it was easy but now were down to about 2000 a year it's getting tough.

I'll do a little poll of our folks this fall and see what they say. I've got a couple of groups that would come "if we had something special." But they have no loyalty to the field so I risk players who will run wild. That just dumps a lot on my refs and risks my regulars not have a good time.

You could have a "Player Ref" that rotates out with your other refs every mission run/hour. This ref could be the general of one side during a certain time frame and wears a special jersey or different arm band (two colored bands on each arm vs one colored band on one arm for regular players).

It wold be one more thing to organize and that ref will have more responsibility during that time, but you will have a reliable person on each team to direct the flow of battle.

I've tried the ref/play and it works okay. But I'd rather find a player to general each force and then let the refs stay on duty full time. I think the refs give a better job as full day refs. it keeps a consistence through the event so the players are exposed to one set of refs and their styles of reffing rather then changing it up during the play.

I'm really a bit of a pain about this stuff, I'd rather do a game of smaller size and do it better then a larger game that makes me more money but have a lot of folks unhappy with it.

This is why I can't afford to have difficult players that create problems with their play style. If I get these folks on field I'll have to double or triple my staff to stay on top of them. Or reduce the number of player we can handle with the normal size staff. Either way these guys are more trouble then they are worth.

We decided to do a test drive, we sent out e-mails to about 1000 of our field players as an invitational only for a special Halloween game. We set the ceiling at 80 and waited.
The first returned e-mail came back in 7 hours and tells the story, "I'm sure I can get 10-12 of my friends to come" So much for trying to invite my customers only as a way of saying thanks.

The idea is good but it still needs work?

This will tell us how far ahead of the event is far enough. It will also give us a failure rate of players to show up with a deposit.

These are important questions and the ability to chat with other field operators about such things would be great. I understand every area is different.

Mine is an area where money is tight. We also have a strong do it yourself attitude. That's why backyard and outlaw is so rampant up here. I wouldn't be surprised to see do it yourself brain surgery next! hehe

Scenario update: We just finished the event and I have to say it was better then I hoped for. The turn out was very light, we were forced to give up the large format we had set up for the 100 player model and scramble into a smaller format. But the players were understanding and went with the flow. We had scattered free stuff on the field for them, that went over very well. We were in good shape by the lunch break and running pretty smooth. So I gave them the lunch and beverages at no charge which was a nice surprise for them. I figured this might help on the poor turn out they were hoping for.
By the end of the day, the comments were all good. It was nice to see players that didn't know each other, blend together and mix well and have a blast. That's what we need to learn again, to work together instead of being afraid to let others mix in. Almost 90% of the games we have are private. People are scared to let strangers in because they are unsure of the player and how he will be to play around. I'd bet many have had bad times with others and they use our private game offer to avoid it happening again.

So while much smaller then we hoped for, it went well, we all had a good time. I'd say it's a win. We learned a lot and will try to put those lessons into next years effort.

Thank-you to the people on here who helped advise me with their thoughts and ideas. I value your opinions and your help.

Last year I went to Scotland in the United Kingdom to visit my friend and he knows I love paintball, so he took me to the game in the forest. There were over 100 people on one side. They play every Sunday. You have the lake, forest, hills, swamp. That was like real war and there is no another chance( until the game is over). I recommend it to everyone live casino guide.

Last edited by StevieAtWar on Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

Well, here we are less then 3 weeks away from our scenario and still unable to get any firm commitment from a lot of players. Took a call from a group of 6 today and they were thinking about it but weren't sure. Makes if tough to insure paint supplies are adequate. We are shooting for 100, I'd say right now we have about 40 that will show. If I order 80 cases and we get a good turn out and we need 200 someone's going to be disappointed!

Well we got the D-Day style scenario done. No real surprises. The turn out was light, the weather was a little less then we hoped for. Supplies held out fine we finished with 25% of the paint left so that was nice. The format and the missions were very popular. I came away with lots of ideas for tweaks that will make it better if we do it again. Lots of new faces which was cool. many walked away saying out facility was wonderful, they had no idea we were up here. That's a big plus.

But the draw of the scenario wasn't what it should have been. I don't know if we'll do another. One poor guy tried to recruit a group from facebook. He had 20 absolutely and 25 possible that he thought was coming. I think he got 2 friends that came in. I've never seen facebook work for putting a game together. But at least they tried to help.

Once I recover from this I'll look at it again and make the decision on a follow up next season. I'm too exhausted right now to make that call.